Wagering or casino or lottery games are typically referred to as live games or electronic games. Live games are those such as Poker, Blackjack, Roulette and the like. Electronic games includes games such as Video Poker and electro-mechanical and video based slot machines. For electronic games, a player inputs a wager which can be money, tokens or fictitious credits. Operation of the device produces an outcome, which can be a winning or a losing outcome. For Video Poker, virtual cards are dealt and the player, by holding and discarding cards, attempts to construct a winning hand combination. For each hand of play, the cards are randomly selected from what may be deemed to be a full deck of cards by a random number generator. That is, as hands are sequentially played, the virtual deck is not depleted of the cards that have already been played. After each hand, the game proceeds as though it were being dealt from a freshly shuffled deck.
For slot machines, symbols are randomly selected and presented along one or more pay lines. The combinations of symbols at an enabled pay line determines whether the player has obtained a winning or a losing outcome.
For live games such as Blackjack, cards are dealt from a deck or from a shoe containing multiple decks to players. The players assemble a final hand of cards which is the outcome. In Blackjack the final hand is the sum of the values of the cards according to the well known rules of the game. As hands are dealt the deck or shoe is depleted to a point where the cards are reshuffled. Players can keep track of the cards played and thus know which cards remain in the deck or shoe. This may give them an advantage.
There is a need for a game which has the excitement of a slot machine as well as the anticipation accompanying the deal of cards. There is also the need for a game where the inventory of symbols is depleted as hands are played, like a deck of cards, until the inventory needs to be re-shuffled. There is also a need for an electronic game which permits the player to, after any hand, order re-shuffling of the symbol inventory. There is further a need for an electronic game where the remaining inventory of symbols for play can be displayed for the player to see.